From Thessaly the tide of population rolled southward;[41] different tribes of Pelasgi, under the name of Leleges, Hyantes, Aones, and Dryopes taking possession of the mountains and valleys of Doris, Locris, Phocis, and extending their migrations into the plains of Bœotia. From thence, across the isthmus, some few straggling hordes appear to have found their way into Peloponnesos, where, as shepherds, they gradually diffused themselves over its rich plains. All the Pelasgi in fact appear like the Arabs and Tartars to have been originally Nomades, different tribes of whom, as they were tempted by the beauty of particular regions, quitted their wandering life, as the Arabs have done in Egypt, Yemen, and elsewhere, and from shepherds became husbandmen. In process of time, the descendants of the settlers, accustomed to the easy and luxurious life of cities, learned to look back upon their wandering ancestors as a wretched and a barbarous race. Indeed, they sometimes speak of them[42] after their arrival in Peloponnesos as cannibals, naked, houseless, ignorant of the use of fire, on a level, in short, with the fiercest and most brutal savages existing in the islands of the Pacific. But these erroneous ideas evidently arose from the theory of autochthoneïty which supposes man to have gradually ripened out of a beast into a man; whereas, the low savages discovered in various parts of the world, do not represent the original state of mankind, but are mere instances of extreme degeneracy. In fact, a different set of traditions also prevailed among the Greeks, which, referring evidently to the period when their ancestors were Nomades, spoke with rapture and enthusiasm of their happy and tranquil life, when, following their flocks from vale to vale and from stream to stream, they fed upon the spontaneous productions which nature spread before them. On this period the poets bestowed the name of the Golden Age, and, perhaps, if examined philosophically, there is no stage in the history of civilisation at which there is so much to enjoy and so little to suffer, as when the whole nation are shepherds, and happen to light upon a land where, as yet too few to inconvenience each other, they can live unmolested by foreign tribes. Footnote 41: Just. xiii. 4.—The Epicnemidian Locrians were anciently called Leleges, and by them the channel of the Cephissos was opened to the sea.—Pliny, iv. 12. Solin. vii. p. 55. Bipont. Hesiod. Frag. 25. Gœttl. Strab. vii. 7. p. 115; ix. 1. p. 248. Scymn. Chius, p. 24.—Phot. Bib. 321. b. Footnote 42: